The only solution seemed to be hitting the road, going to the towns where data center fights were happening, and talking to as many people as I could: activists, yes, but also workers, planners, politicians, and residents. I wanted to learn: Do most people actually care about data centers, or just a passionate few? What’s motivating these revolts—is it about AI, or energy costs, or good old NIMBYism? How did local opposition become a national issue? And how is AI moving elections?
[...]
My conversations make me wonder if the technical content of data center deals is mostly beside the point. Closed-loop cooling systems? “I don’t believe them.” Paying millions in taxes? “I don’t believe them.” Creating a thousand jobs? “I don’t believe them.” I hear a reflexive skepticism of every claim.
Rather, the way that AI companies engage with communities—forcing NDAs, dangling billion-dollar promises, pushing environmental externalities far away from AI’s wealthy user base—resembles a classic story about dark money in politics. Your politicians are being bought by billionaires and gigantic corporations to screw you over. It’s not Skynet: it’s the oligarchy.
[...]
So: what is driving the data center fights erupting across America, from rural farmers to feminist academics, from conservative NIMBYs to Bernie bros?
First, the material impacts: AI data centers are big, ugly, noisy, and very energy-hungry. Construction processes are long and locally disruptive. Water consumption and air pollution is generally minimal, but there are exceptions. In a vacuum, most people would choose to live by a flower field over a data center. But these costs are not so different from other industrial developments like manufacturing or solar farms. Those don’t go up without dissent, but have not commanded the shared hatred that data centers have.
Second, process failure. Many people living near data center sites don’t feel that they got a choice. In San Francisco we see how desperate the industry is for compute—atoms still do not scale as seamlessly as bits. That tremendous financial pressure is materializing as fast tracks, fat checks, and limited time for public input. It looks like Big Tech cheating the system, engaging in cronyism and bribery, throwing money bags at politicians and hoping the dollar signs substitute for a positive case.
Third, weak benefits. There is no compelling pro-data-center, pro-AI faction. Charles Franklin, who runs the Marquette Law Poll, emphasized that you only get sentiment this skewed when one side fails to make a case. The AI and utility companies are unsympathetic, permanent workers are not numerous, and most consumers do not feel that AI products are essential to their lives. At least nuclear power and public housing has its advocates (especially among those who live far away). Data centers are hated whether you live near one or not.
Moreover, tax contributions can be delayed, and many in deindustrialized areas aren’t sure if they’ll ever pan out. In the era of the K-shaped economy, being “pro-growth” in the generic has lost its sheen. Several activists assured me they were not anti-technology—I didn’t hear much about specific AI harms—but that an email-writing widget was not worth a data center in their backyard. And more crucially, they did not want their town to be the collateral damage in a few tech billionaires’ pointless ego race. If AI is a bubble, they didn’t want to be part of the pop.
Finally, grievance is amplified by a national environment of historically low trust in corporations and the government. Americans of all parties feel the economy is “rigged” against them; “corruption” and “affordability” regularly rank as top concerns. News articles and viral TikToks teach people to link their local complaints to these bigger political messages: data centers are enriching politicians and billionaires while raising your electric bills. Facebook groups convert solo concerns into social movements. Everywhere in my interviews, people suspected their opponents of being paid off.
You cannot detach the data center backlash from these broader trends in American political culture. “AI populism” is more about populism than about AI.
[...]
Back in San Francisco, it is striking how little the AI industry understands its own unpopularity—the reasons that people resist. They ask if it’s a problem of benefits not being generous enough, or else a big misinformation campaign. (By the end of the trip, my friends and I felt slightly ashamed of the caricatures we originally believed in. In general, one should be cautious about assuming your opponents are just reading fake news.)
In Wisconsin and Michigan, sometimes bigger numbers made observers more suspicious. People saw them and thought: I’m being bribed. There must be a catch. It turns out that politics is more than an optimization game; voter interests are neither stable nor reducible to dollar amounts. It is also about thymos: the desire to be “recognized as a human being… with a certain worth or dignity,” who can sacrifice material survival in service of higher ideals. Through Fukuyama’s lens, elections and town halls and social media debates matter not because they are maximally efficient preference aggregators, but because they are “a stage for the expression of thymos”—a place where people make their values heard.
Ah yes the daily issues of the common human. Well you could make it green space and give it back to the community. If only everything didn't have to have commercial value. Or let the concrete sit...
or the more workaday concern of your startup running out of cash.
Ah yes the daily issues of the common human.
maybe this is a choice between a hyperscale data center and a concrete slab. And Alyssa, Cathy, and Kaycee would rather pick the slab.
Well you could make it green space and give it back to the community. If only everything didn't have to have commercial value. Or let the concrete sit another 30 years and the plants will do it on their own I suppose.
Foxconn taught many residents to never believe a tech company’s—or their local government’s—sweet-talking ever again.
That's probably right.
But not everyone is losing out from the data center boom. Just ask any of the earthmovers, HVAC engineers, electricians, or crane operators earning six-figure salaries working on data centers.
Which isn't sustainable income for the community. Jobs building the thing aren't jobs that stay in the community, especially if your contractors aren't local.
It’s not as much permanent employment as a factory, but a far cry from the “jobs myth” that opponents assert.
It's not permanent employment at all though. It's "number go up" logic.
Even from her footnotes:
They were all grateful for the work—but nobody knew how long it’d last.
Yeah because it's not any permanent employment.
Most workers in America today, and most who are vulnerable to AI displacement, don’t have organized representation. In an age of accelerating disruptions, it sure would be nice to have a guy like Terry on your side.
Yeah the AI companies really should support unions!
Every day people will be flying in from literally around the world to go to that data center. They will be in our hotels, they will be at our restaurants, they will hopefully fall in love with our community and move here,” Ted proclaimed.
That's... An interesting argument but where's that evidence? Even the reporter didn't claim tourism money just construction money.
“I don’t know that Teddy Roosevelt would have been able to do what he did if he was worried about what was said to him on Facebook,” he said.
Ah, humility
DTE and Consumers Energy have assured us that your rates will not rise,’ which nobody trusts, because they’ve experienced DTE and Consumers raise rates repeatedly,”
From a PR lens this is the strongest case from opponents. Your rates will never fall anyway so the promise that they'll rise is believable and will be fulfilled and thus attested to the next town interested in fighting it. Plus people already hate getting asked to conserve electricity on power grids, doing so while the data center doesn't slow down? The grids failing because the power company didn't invest in infrastructure but still raised your rates? Winning case every time.
Especially when
The 1.4 GW data center is a 25 percent increase on top of DTE’s total demand—likely requiring new generators and gas plants to supply it.
Yeah. Why here? Because you can bully the town? (They did)
the audience booed even louder at the name Elon Musk.
Well he just said we'll get rid of source code and the AI will write directly into binary, and that Grok would make a better Odyssey with more white people, so guess that'll show them.
In San Francisco we see how desperate the industry is for compute—
And how the average person is worried about their startup! I'm sorry that line is just so out of touch.
And they have no data centers in SF apparently. Yeah it feels like they want to outsource their construction/land/noise/etc because they do.
being “pro-growth” in the generic has lost its sheen.
Because number doesn't only go up. When number goes down, these towns lose out, again.
A backroom data center deal, then, is the negation of thymos. It is corrosive not because it is uneconomical or will make residents worse off in every case, but because it suggests that the demos’s buy-in was never important at all.
What is perhaps the most frustrating thing is that this was apparently inconceivable until they went to Wisconsin. Is still inconceivable to the AI companies in SF. How deeply out of touch. Not just from the industry but from the journalists. It's great they did this, this should be the standard though and if we hadn't gutted local journalism out of a similar lack of value for thymos, we might get it more often.
Idk the journalist outside of this so it may just be how she comes off in the article. Maybe she's a vocal critic. Skimming her work she tries for some balance but seems fairly pro-industry
Someone else who shared her work was explaining patiently that there isn't "9/9/6" culture in Wisconsin. No there isn't because that's awful, please get a union! Like for real. That's half your life at work. Like that's literally illegal in better places. You'd make less money in WI but the cheese is better and the cost of living is lower and you won't have to worry about your start up because you can just like, work a job and live your life.
From the article:
[...]
[...]
[...]
Ah yes the daily issues of the common human.
Well you could make it green space and give it back to the community. If only everything didn't have to have commercial value. Or let the concrete sit another 30 years and the plants will do it on their own I suppose.
That's probably right.
Which isn't sustainable income for the community. Jobs building the thing aren't jobs that stay in the community, especially if your contractors aren't local.
It's not permanent employment at all though. It's "number go up" logic.
Even from her footnotes:
Yeah because it's not any permanent employment.
Yeah the AI companies really should support unions!
That's... An interesting argument but where's that evidence? Even the reporter didn't claim tourism money just construction money.
Ah, humility
From a PR lens this is the strongest case from opponents. Your rates will never fall anyway so the promise that they'll rise is believable and will be fulfilled and thus attested to the next town interested in fighting it. Plus people already hate getting asked to conserve electricity on power grids, doing so while the data center doesn't slow down? The grids failing because the power company didn't invest in infrastructure but still raised your rates? Winning case every time.
Especially when
Yeah. Why here? Because you can bully the town? (They did)
Well he just said we'll get rid of source code and the AI will write directly into binary, and that Grok would make a better Odyssey with more white people, so guess that'll show them.
And how the average person is worried about their startup! I'm sorry that line is just so out of touch.
And they have no data centers in SF apparently. Yeah it feels like they want to outsource their construction/land/noise/etc because they do.
Because number doesn't only go up. When number goes down, these towns lose out, again.
What is perhaps the most frustrating thing is that this was apparently inconceivable until they went to Wisconsin. Is still inconceivable to the AI companies in SF. How deeply out of touch. Not just from the industry but from the journalists. It's great they did this, this should be the standard though and if we hadn't gutted local journalism out of a similar lack of value for thymos, we might get it more often.
Idk the journalist outside of this so it may just be how she comes off in the article. Maybe she's a vocal critic. Skimming her work she tries for some balance but seems fairly pro-industry
Someone else who shared her work was explaining patiently that there isn't "9/9/6" culture in Wisconsin. No there isn't because that's awful, please get a union! Like for real. That's half your life at work. Like that's literally illegal in better places. You'd make less money in WI but the cheese is better and the cost of living is lower and you won't have to worry about your start up because you can just like, work a job and live your life.